tar/gzip/gz...which one to use?

P0251WLADC.svm_wl1 > /svm_wl1/billing/data/server/archive/ALLEVT

$ du -k FEB2006
22050224 FEB2006

As you can see,i have a folder called "FEB2006" which is around 22 GB.
i guess zip or compress wont work...( i don know how do we compress a folder)
i wished to use ""tar" ( i suppose thats the best option)
but i m confused about its syntax..
pls guide

tar cvf /svm_wl1/billing/data/server/archive/ALLEVT/FEB2006 /svm_wl1/billing/data/server/archive/ALLEVT/FEB2006.tar

is it correct?will this create "FEB2006.tar" file releasing some space to system?

thanks & regards
abhijeetkul

sysntax is

tar -cvf tarfilename directoryorfilestobetarred

is it OK?

tar cvf FEB2006.tar /svm_wl1/billing/data/server/archive/ALLEVT/FEB2006

regards
abhijeet

seems fine to me,
just use -cvf instead of cvf.
go ahead and try it out.
but if your aim is to free up the system space, then you need to remeber two things,

1) when you tar the files the original files will still remain there in the directory, so you need to remove them after doing tar
2) gzip the tar file

Gaurav

No, you need to reverse the arguments to tar. Also, if your intention
is to save disk space, then tar by itself will do no good, as it does no
compression. Use the `j' or `z' flags to tar to compress with bzip2 or
gzip.

cd /svm/billing/data/server/archive/ALLEVT
tar jcf FEB2006.tar.bz2 FEB2006

thanks gurus,
it worked .tar & gzip spared me 20GB space.

thanks & regards
abhijeet